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Yaeji Is Home

November 16, 2017

I’m relieved when, after showing up late, hungover, and apologetic to the SoHo café where I’m supposed to meet Yaeji, she lets me know that she’s had a late night, too. Yesterday she played a gig in Seattle, immediately flew back to New York, and proceeded to go out dancing at the Bushwick bar Mood Ring with her friends until the early hours of the morning. She smiles sweetly as she tells me this, peering at me through her trademark circular, Grandma-like gold spectacles, her eyes accentuated by subtle brushstrokes of Day-Glo makeup.

Yaeji, full name Yaeji Kathy Lee, is a 24-year-old DJ, rapper, singer and producer whose trance- and house-influenced music radiates both infectious pulse and disarming vulnerability. When I first encountered Yaeji’s work, on her track “Feel It Out,” I had to listen a few times to understand what I was hearing: her singing is soft, unwavering, and almost chant-like, as if she’s telling you a secret, while her instrumentals veer toward 4 AM, end-of-night simmering bangers. Her music is initially bizarre, even uncomfortable, but undeniably alluring.

Born in Queens, where she lived until she was five, Yaeji and her family bounced around a lot, eventually spending a stint in her parents’ native South Korea. She returned to the States to study visual art at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh before settling in New York.

“I came [to New York] not knowing anyone,” she says, picking at some avocado toast. “It was very lonely for a long time. I think what kept me going was my true passion for music. I would go to so many shows, like four or five a week, just because I was into the sound, and that led me to friendships.”

Like the self-titled EP on which “Feel It Out” appeared, her latest EP, EP2, showcases the duality that makes Yaeji special. Take “raingurl,” a throbbing highlight whose lyrics juxtapose carefree clubbing with spiraling introspection, an effect heightened by Yaeji’s bilingual rapping. The joyfully hedonistic chorus (“When the sweaty walls are banging / I don’t fuck with family planning / Make it rain, girl, make it rain”) is balanced by soft, lyrical musings in Korean (“All the suffocated memories…In a room with no windows.”)

This contrast extends to, and is manifested by, Yaeji’s identity as a Korean-American. “My whole life up until college I would say I was lonely,” she tells me. “I don’t have siblings, and my parents were always working very hard, and they still are. So I spent a lot of time alone and didn’t have friends. When I was in America (as a child), I just couldn’t relate; I wouldn’t get along with people. But it wasn’t that I was super Korean. I knew it was really because of how I looked.”

In Korea, the sense of isolation was different but no less present—she looked like everyone else, but had spent nine years immersed in American language and culture. “In that way,” she says, “my upbringing definitely made it difficult for me to feel comfortable.”

Things couldn’t be more different now. A year after moving to New York, Yaeji finds herself at the center of a supportive, diverse, and creative community of close friends. Pals from her college radio station—“all nerdy and really into music”—make up some of her crew, but she’s also picked up people along the way. The group uses her Bushwick visual art studio as a clubhouse of sorts.

“I have a studio because I wanted to have a completely separate practice from my music, and just have ideas flow that way,” she says, tapping her fingers on the table. “It helps me with my music. And then I realized that it was such a good hub for people to come and hang out. [The studio] definitely sparks so many conversations—late night conversations, which is really special for me because I had that in college. That’s my favorite way of getting to know someone.”

New York can be lonely, especially after graduating. But listening to Yaeji tell me about her makeshift family (which I’m desperate to be included in), I found some solace in having felt that sense of isolation myself, not only as lunch mates, but as two members of the same overly-connected generation. Though Yaeji’s work openly deals with feelings of isolation, she rarely writes about the most romanticized type of loneliness—heartbreak.

I was really scared of getting bigger because I was raised in a culture that’s very private and very, very polite.

“There are some sad love songs I’ve written,” she says slyly. “But recently I’ve been feeling really great and really loved.” She agrees to tell me about the guy she’s dating, as long as I don’t use any names. “We were friends for a while, since I moved here, and he’s really a supportive partner—and I am to him, too. Maybe I’ll make more songs about that soon,” she says, pushing her glasses up her nose and smiling. “Maybe I’ll stop being so moody.”

Yaeji shies away from compliments, which is incredibly endearing. She instead tends to play off her growing success—write-ups in the New Yorker, rave reviews from Pitchfork, video plays in the millions—as simply another notch on the belt of her collective of friends as a whole. For someone who spent a lot of time by herself growing up, Yaeji’s appreciation for and cultivation of community is not only logical, but vital to her being. “I was really scared of getting bigger because I was raised in a culture that’s very private and very, very polite,” she says to me, sighing. “So for me, when something exciting happens, I’m very shy about sharing it.” She smiles like a proud mom talking about her kids. “I feel like we’re growing together.”

Related blogposts

Cue the Smoke Machine

May 23, 2019

Twelve’Len’s new video just dropped, and it’s hard to take your eyes off of it—when was the last time a DIY video by an R&B artist was described as cinematic? The visual elements are similar to those of his music: informed by classics. The track is smooth with a savory thump, harkening back to pre-hip hop urban music that was groovy and easy-going, but brimming with heart.

office had a chance to catch the artist and speak to him about backyard babecues, Florida, and the current state of R&B. Check it below.

Interview by John Martin Tilley

So tell me about yourself and your work.

As far as with the music video, the video for “Thank the Gang” started off as a recording, a film recording for a festival that we have here in Miami called III Points. And I just went, and I picked up like a mid-2000s—no, I’m sorry—an early 2000s camcorder out of a pawn shop. I was just trying to shoot some footage with me and my homies for III Points that they could show on the projections. It was a really good show. I played, and then right after me, The Internet came on-stage and played, and then Tyler*.

So that’s how it began, as video for projections, and then we just kept shooting. I said I could do a performance in one of these scenes with this camera, and we actually just started shooting it. And I was like, ‘You know what? I think I want to shoot an entire video with this film.’ Because with the entire album itself that I’d been creating, it’s been built around a lot of 90s and 80s R&B aesthetic and also a lot of influences from Miami that didn’t get the light shined upon at its time. Like the DJ Uncle Al, you know? A lot of people know about, like, Uncle Luke when it comes to Miami culture, but they don’t really shine light on Uncle Al, who is the originator. So, a lot of this stuff is inspired by Uncle Al, like the sample that you hear at the beginning? That’s from Uncle Al. It’s more of the aesthetics of who I am, trying to create a balance in keeping R&B traditional, but still showing this essence of what colored culture, or urban culture itself, projects when it comes to R&B and alternative music. Because growing up, like you know, coming where I come from, I listened to a lot of Frankie Beverly and Maze and a lot of Al Green and Marvin Gaye. And those are the records and that is the music that was projected in our neighborhood that growing up—well, me growing up in my household—it’s what we listened to.

Nowadays, the music that is pushed more into the urban market is, you know, the more heavy-hitting hip-hop rap, you know, trap shit, you feel me? Which is cool, I enjoy it, but it’s kind of fucked up when you have an artist like myself that is doing something that is different from what the mass is doing, coming and being projected amongst our culture of the urban culture. So I get looked at, you know, weirdly at first, until you actually hear it, and you feel the soul in it. And you realize that it’s always lived within you, you know? Because you grew up on it. But we just been disconnected from it for some time, because of what urban culture has been projecting today.

Right, so it’s almost like a return to origins or an embrace of the past?

Yeah, embracing the past and embracing unity and loving one another and coming together, you feel me? Enjoying each other’s company, you know, like those backyard functions and those barbecues when you’re with your family. And when you’re with your lady, you know? When you’re out on your date just having a good night, having a good time, and just growing up. Getting past all the hype.

Part of what I liked about it is what you’re saying, it’s a very different theme just in terms of the lyrics, and the attitude of it is quite different and less aggressive than what is generally perceived these days as cool, like hip-hop, which can be almost jarring and intense sometimes. So it’s really connected to Florida as well?

Yeah, it’s definitely heavily connected with Florida, yo. I actually grew up across the street from the guy named DJ Chipman. He was a very known DJ from even way back in the late 90s as well. He had a few records that—well, not a few—he had a record that was featured on Family Guy as well. It’s like a dance record. It’s a dance record called Peanut Butter and Jelly.

Oh my god, wait, he wrote 'Peanut Butter Jelly Time'?

Yeah, that’s DJ Chipman, yeah.

Oh my god, no way. That’s crazy!

Yeah, so I actually grew up amongst these people as a kid versus a lot of these other musicians, you know, from Florida who know these records and grew up on it. I actually, like, grew up under these guys. They knew me as a child, you know? I knew Rick Ross as a child; I knew Flo Rida as a child. Like I was in the studio with Flo Rida and Rick Ross. I even did vocals for Trick Daddy as a child.

Wow.

Yeah. All of them’s from my neighborhood, you know? Like literally, from my neighborhood.

That’s crazy! So how old are you now?

I’m 26 now.

Okay, wow that’s so interesting. It’s always interesting when a specific neighborhood or a specific place sort of produces a lot of talent. How do you think that happens? Or like, how does that come about? Is it just from people bouncing off each other?

Yeah, I think it was because of people bouncing off each other, or it’s probably something in the water. I don’t know. It’s probably something in the water.

Do you feel a certain pressure to participate in more of the current, aggressive style of hip-hop?

I don’t feel pressure to participate or even dabble into it of any sort, because I grew up on it as well, you know? My favorite musicians would be like Al Green and Marvin Gaye. But actually growing up listening to music, if I had to select music to actually play, I mean, I played a lot of R&B. I played like—my favorite artist growing up was 50 Cent, you feel me?

Ugh, I love him.

Yeah, that was my dude.

He was like my conversion to hip-hop. Him and Kanye West.

[Laughs] Yeah, Kanye West, 50 Cent. Goodie Mob, Outkast, Tupac, like those—that’s what I listened to. Like when I do participate in, like, more of that type of style of music, it’s just like being home, you know? I enjoy the art, the rap music. I love it. Like I fucking love it, but we gotta still have a balance in which we have this area we can go to continue progressing in life instead of being in this one way. And that’s—I feel like that’s the piece I play in neighborhoods like my neighborhood. Outside of my neighborhood, that’s the piece I feel like I play to inspire. Those, I understand, are like, ‘Ay! You know, you a songbird, of course. But you don’t have to make this type of music.’ Like you’re doing something different.

But in all reality, this is the music that your parents raised you up on. This is the music that your mom played around the house, your grandmother played around. Rap music’s only been around for—it hasn’t been around that long. It’s been around what? Like 30 years? 30-35 years? So before that, all we had was soul and rock, you know? And R&B. But that’s my whole thing. It’s that you don’t have to feel like you’re being misplaced in trying to keep it traditional, you know?

Would you classify yourself as an R&B singer more than a hip-hop musician or do you dabble in both?

I mean, I dabble in both. But I would definitely always set my music in R&B, because that’s what I’m more—that’s what I’m true to.

You definitely don’t hear a lot of R&B these days. There was a really cool R&B moment a few years ago with Usher and Trey Songz.

I feel like R&B kind of got stale, because it stopped evolving. And now, R&B has begun to evolve again, because it’s pulling those great things that you like from rap and adopting it into R&B. So therefore, it can evolve once again, you know? It can emerge once again. You know, so you had, like, that whole era where you had—They call it “trap R&B.” Me personally, I don’t like it. I don’t like that. I’ll only accept trap R&B from Bryson Tiller, from The Weeknd, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Drake, and 6lack. Other than that, I don’t accept it from no one else. Because I feel like we shouldn’t have to adopt hip-hop so much into a genre and ruin the genre, you feel me?

That was my whole thing with creating my project, figuring out how to create R&B music and make sure when you hear it, you feel like, ‘Yo, this is R&B. But... it got a bounce.’ It makes it feel hardcore, but it’s R&B, you know what I mean? Like that was my whole thing. Trying to figure out how to balance it, in which I can evolve with traditional R&B. Like listening to Isaac Hayes or listening to Usher and making it today, making it modern, you know?

Check out Twelve'Len's new video, 'Thank the Gang' below.

I was trying to figure out how to create R&B music and make sure when you hear it, you feel like, ‘Yo, this is R&B. But... it got a bounce.’

Not Your Deity

May 16, 2019

Vōx isn’t falling for your God complex. While the LA-based singer-songwriter grew up struggling to coexist with the Lutheran ideals she was surrounded by, through creating, she’s reached the reflection point. While writing her forthcoming EP, ‘I Am Not a God,’ (slated for release on August 15) the artist pulled herself back into the past, remembering all the doubt she took on as a child saddled with guilt. “[I felt] I was too imperfect to be loved, even by God or whatever higher power was out there,” she told office.

She pushed back on those feelings over time, but they left their traces. And she’s transmuted them into something beautiful––her look these days evokes Björk-meets-Mary Magdelene realness: doll-like and soft and strange. And she finds inspiration for her moody, trap-infused melodies in the growth she was forced to cultivate. " 'I Am Not a God' is an exploration of self-love, being enough in my pure intentions," she said.

Trust Your Angels

May 14, 2019

Jonas Mekas was the truest champion of avant-garde and independent film. He arrived in New York from Lithuania in 1949 and spent the next seventy years of his life making, critiquing, praising and proliferating underground and experimental movies, thus inscribing himself into the city’s artistic lore.

He co-founded the seminal Film Culture journal and Anthology Film Archives, wrote reviews for the Village Voice, and gleefully skewered Hollywood films as gross, banal, and “second-rate art.” As the critic J. Hoberman puts it, “Every avant-garde, independent experimental-film artist in America is in some way in Jonas’s debt.” Go to https://expansion-anthologyfilmarchives.org/ to donate and learn more about the expansion project.

office was fortunate enough to have Nathan Lewis speak with Mekas before he left us in early 2019. He was 96.

NATHAN LEWIS — Is there any item in your workspace that you could not live without?

JONAS MEKAS — There is no one item. There are essential parts—the computer, it’s a basic item in any office today. If you are communicating with the outside, if you are just forced to do personal work and you never go out, your computer communicates for you, but that’s something else. But my life involves me being in so many different things.

NL — It’s much easier to connect to the whole world now with a computer.

JM — Yes, I am still very connected. But the telephone is something that’s not as important—I never use the telephone.

NL — Never?

JM — Never. To call or text sometimes.

NL — So mainly email?

JM — I operate with email. Or my website—that’s my technology department right there. You can see it. I’m totally in digital right now.

NL — All digital? So, when was the last time that you shot a roll of analog?

JM — 1988 or ‘89, 30 years ago. But when people interview me, they always talk only about [laughs]—I have been for 30 years in digital, and they’re still talking about the analog.

NL — So the last roll you shot was in ’88?

JM — Bolex. Bolex was 30 years ago. Yeah.

NL — Did you guys go to Sony straight away then, after the Bolex?

JM — Actually yes, Sony. Bolex is history, the film just came out. [laughs] But the history of the Bolex camera tells you that Bolex is part of history. The factory is closed, they don’t make it anymore.

NL — And you went through quite a few.

JM — I went through five Bolexes! One Bolex lasts seven years or so. The spring gets used up.

NL — And what about the Sony?

JM — The Sony changes every three years. [laughs]

NL — Really?

JM— No, I’m joking. Because the new digital technology, in order to make money, corporations keep changing their formats, et cetera.

NL — I think last time you shot you had, what was it, a Nikon? The little pocket camera you had?

JM— Yes, I had my current camera. This is it! This is my Nikon. Now it’s not Sony. Nikon. Nikon. Now it’s rolling. You are in. So, we are now where you can have in one pocket a pencil, and in the other one your camera. That was the dream of Cocteau. Where movie cameras become like pencils, then cinema will be equal with other arts. That’s where we are now.

NL — Did you ever think when shooting on a Bolex that those cameras were going to become so small?

JM — I did not think so, but it’s the natural development. Everything gets big, and then gets smaller and smaller. Even humans are smaller than when they began! The Neanderthal man, two million years ago, was much bigger, taller. We are shorter. Humans have become shorter, smaller.

NL — So, back to the question of your workspace, how important is this space to you as an artist?

JM — I do not consider myself an artist. That I should stress. Because I just like to make things, and they’re not necessarily art, they’re just something that I like to make. I like to make things. And people like to have some things that other people make. That does not help to make art. Art is a very vague, very nebular kind of term, I don’t like to use it. But I need this space because I do a lot of stuff. I wear many different hats. So I need a lot of space. Actually, telling the truth, I’m planning to move out. This place is too expensive. So I have moved out five truckloads already from this place. I consider it now almost empty. A lot of junk, because I do many things.

NL — When you moved to New York initially, because you were doing so many things, did you live and work out of the same space?

JM — Well, I was dropped in New York by the United Nations refugee organization. So I just had myself and a suitcase. And no place, no office. I slept in friends’ homes. Initially I was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. That was 1950, ’51, ’52. And then in the spring of ’53 I jumped to Orchard Street, to Manhattan. I left Brooklyn in the spring of 1953, and never went back. It was miserable. It was the most miserable area of Brooklyn, Williamsburg. Now, Manhattan has conquered Williamsburg. Williamsburg is part of Manhattan, part of Wall Street.

NL — So you were in Manhattan for a long time?

JM — Until 2004.

NL — Why did you feel the need to leave?

JM — I had to escape it. It was too much like Wall Street. In Brooklyn there are still people, real people who are of many different nationalities, and it’s still messy. There are places that are still pretty messy. The best restaurants and eating places are in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is real. Also, Brooklyn is like an extension, like the new Paris, while Paris is becoming the new Brooklyn. So Manhattanites—keep out of Brooklyn.

NL — How do you feel just about the physical aspects of Manhattan?

JM — Boring. The buildings and everything are just boring.

NL — I just feel a bit too confined there.

JM— They have nothing to do with architecture, those buildings. Just boxes, just big, brick boxes.

NL — So has Brooklyn changed since the 1950s?

JM — I know that Williamsburg has changed! The rest, not that much. You see, Manhattan conquers, their tactic is piece by piece, smaller, and to constantly gobble up a specific part. I don’t know which is the next spot they are attacking but I bet they’re looking into other areas.

NL — What’s next to be gobbled? Maybe the Bronx?

JM — Hmm, Harlem! Harlem was actually taken at the same time as Williamsburg. But Brooklyn is still pretty wild, big, eclectic, which is good.

NL — Do you have a favorite building, besides Anthology [Film Archives]?

JM — Some people don’t like working in the museum—I happen to like it as a building. And then you see the Frick museum. I like museums where you walk in and you can see everything that is in it. And the Frick Museum is one of those, they have great pieces of medieval and Renaissance art, and you can see everything. You can see it twice! You can walk two or three times through it. You cannot do that at the Met, it’s too big.

NL — Every time we go to the Met it’s very overwhelming.

JM — But it is good that it’s there. There are not that many structures left around New York that are important as pieces of architecture. Maybe 10 or 15 throughout all of the boroughs. Usually small, little places. Others are important because of what’s in them, like the Frick. But the Anthology building is very special for downtown, it stands out a little, like it doesn’t belong there. Not only that, it is different and solidly made, because it used to be a courthouse and a prison. But now it contains over 30,000 very important works of cinema, of the art of cinema. So it’s a very important spot in New York.

NL — And it’s kind of a good point of resistance, as well.

JM — Yes, it’s a point of energy, it’s very condensed and rich. And it’s double-edged. It contains the history of cinema, of the art of cinema, and at the same time we are more open than any other place for the new, a lot of works from other countries and small areas, alternative forms of cinema. So it combines both. You have to respect and protect the past, and be very open to what’s happening now, to the new. And that is what we are trying to do.

NL — Can you give us any advice, on anything?

JM — I am not a thinking person. I just do things, I like to make things. I do it without thinking, so no thoughts. Keep them out. Be totally open, get all the thoughts out, permit the miserable, and the miraculous will come into it.

NL — That’s great advice. That’s it, you just have to be open.

JM — Yeah, good luck.

NL — [laughs] What is the latest thing you built?

JM — I’m building now! I’m building a library on top of the Anthology Film Archives building on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street in Manhattan. I’m adding another floor, and on the side I am adding a café, which we need for our survival. And we need the library because we have a lot of paper and material that must be available, and it is now not available to those who need it. And that’s a big project.

NL — That’s a beautiful thing to do, for people to have.

JM — When everyone is closing libraries, we are building one.

NL — Thank you.

JM — $15 million, and we have $10.5 million, we still need the other five. So anybody who reads this that has access to corporations and individuals who love cinema and libraries, they can help us by contributing one, two, three, four million. [laughs] Oh, I should add, this is part of the fundraising for the library—this spring in April or May we are organizing a big fundraising event, and the main item we are going to sell is Allen Ginsberg’s beard! How about that! Allen Ginsberg’s beard that Barbara Rubin chopped off in 1962, and the filmmakers put it in a box and gave that box to me, and I put it up next to Allen’s books. And now it will be auctioned for $1 million, if you want to possess the beard of Allen Ginsberg, from which you can use the DNA to reproduce and make a few other copies of Ginsbergs! This is your chance, for $1 million, and you will help us to build the library, and you will own Allen Ginsberg’s beard.

NL — Do you play any instruments?

JM — I play harmonica, I play bugle, I have a lot of different instruments. I grew up with music.

NL — You scored most of your films yourself, right?

JM — Yes, every aspect is done by me.

NL — Where do you draw your inspiration from?

JM— No, I don’t like inspiration. The question is about being open, about permitting things to come in. Whatever I do from my own ideas, it comes out wrong. All the things I’ve thought like “Oh, I should do this,” it comes out wrong. I used to be very careful with one’s own ideas because the tendency is, you invent something, you want it to happen, you want it to succeed. Which is very different than what sort of comes mysteriously, I say like what angels are sending you. I trust my angels. But you have to be very sensitive to separate the two—what comes from mysterious infinities and what comes from your own head. Keep the head out.

NL — Keep the head out and leave it to the angels, right?

JM — Keep clean from all of the thoughts, yeah.

NL — So aside from Anthology and the expansion project, what’s next for you?

JM— I am in several, major projects right now, but I don’t want to talk about them. They keep coming up. I think there is one I can tell. You know about The Shed project? It’s a new, flexible—and the biggest maybe, in New York—performance space that is being built right now around 10th Avenue and 30th Street. It’s a very ambitious project. I am doing something for them. There will be a premiere of Eke’s Requiem, and I am doing the visual part for that, so that’s quite a big project coming out one year from now. Will it be good for New York or not—now that’s another question, because everything is becoming too big. And I think we should really go the other direction.

NL — Make it more intimate?

JM — Yes.

NL — I think you’re right. Because if you go see a band at a huge venue, you don’t really take anything away from it. But if you are in a small, intimate space you normally gain a lot more from it.

JM — Maybe both are a circus. People need both the intimate, and they need the circus